A 23 year-old cult classic pirate series has been revived as a free open-world RPG inspired by the best pirate game ever, and it's getting great Steam reviews

15.02.2024 - 12:23 / gamesradar.com / Sid Meier / Johnny Depp / Jordan Gerblick / And It

So, there's pretty much a new Sea Dogs game, but first I have a lot of context to share. If you'd rather not indulge in the long and confusing history of a cult classic pirate series, just scroll down until just after the picture of some pirates in front of a ship and that'll take you straight to the point.

The 23 year-old Sea Dogs series has an unbelievably complicated history. The first game, simply titled Sea Dogs (Corsairs in Russia), was made by the now defunct Russia-based developer Akella and released in 2003, with Bethesda taking on publishing rights in North America. The RPG is widely considered the first 3D pirate game and is heavily inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates!, itself often called the single best pirate video game of all time.

Akella and Bethesda's follow-up was originally called Sea Dogs 2 but was changed to Pirates of the Caribbean at the last minute when Disney paid to have it shipped as a tie-in to the 2003 movie starring Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Although it was positioned as such, it had little to do with the movie aside from one ship named the Black Pearl and, well, the whole pirate thing. Also, weirdly, it didn't follow the plot of the first Sea Dogs game either; it was kind of just its own thing.

Then there was 2006's Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales, developed by Akella and published by 1C Company and Playlogic, the first in the series to adopt the Age of Pirates title as Bethesda still owned the rights to Sea Dogs. This spawned yet another sequel, 2009's Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships, from Akella and Playlogic. So that explains why the series is referred to using three different names: Sea Dogs, Corsairs, and Age of Pirates.

After Age of Pirates and Age of Pirates 2 flopped, Akella turned to a group of Sea Dogs/Age of Pirates modders on a fan forum and gave them the rights to develop an unofficial add-on to Age of Pirates 2, but Akella decided to release it commercially as an official follow-up, inexplicably named Sea Dogs: To Each His Own, in 2012.

PHEW. Ok, so sail forward to today; Akella is no more and BlackMark, the studio behind Sea Dogs: To Each His Own, has a new game out called Caribbean Legend: Sandbox, which is "based on Sea Dogs" and "inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates!" It looks like the most faithful unofficial follow-up fans could possibly hope for, even sporting graphics that, while beautiful, look like they came straight from 2013.

Caribbean Legend: Sandbox is the free version of another game, just called Caribbean Legend, launching Thursday. According to BlackMark, Sandbox is the same game but it's missing a bunch of stuff, chiefly, "a story mode with unique events, pirate and officer careers, colony building, romance, and hundreds of hours of